She paused, then offered, so quietly, so gently, “Maybe the kind of guy worth your time is the kind of guy who’s there from the beginning. Who wants you from the beginning.”
“I know. I mean, intellectually, I understand that. It’s just . . .”
Admit it, I thought to myself. Admit it and get it out there, and at least that way it won’t be rolling around in your head anymore.
“I don’t agree with him a lot of the time,
most
of the time, and he drives me crazy, but I get him. I know I drive him crazy, but I feel like he . . . like he gets me somehow, too. Appreciates something about me. I’m different, Mallory. I’m not like the rest of them. And I’m not like you anymore.” I looked up at her and saw both sadness and acceptance in her eyes. I thought of what Lindsey had said, and parroted her words. “Ethan isn’t like the rest of them, either. For all the strategy, the talk of alliances, he holds himself back from them.”
“He holds himself back from you.”
Not every time, I thought, and that was the payoff that kept me coming back for more.
“And you’re holding yourself back from me, from Morgan.”
“I know,” I said again. “Look, about Morgan, there are other considerations. What you know isn’t the entire story.” What I knew wasn’t the entire story either, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to tell the rest of it, to tell Mallory about the lingering relationship between the current and former Masters of Navarre. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done anyway.”
“Done?”
“Earlier. Before she found me. We ended it.” Not that it truly mattered. He didn’t trust me, had never trusted me. Maybe his own insecurities, maybe the rumors that seemed to follow me, maybe the sense that I’d never been really his.
Mallory interrupted my reverie and was, as usual, right on. “There is nothing we want quite as much as the thing we know we can’t have.”
I nodded, although I wasn’t sure if she meant me or Morgan. “I know.”
The room was silent for a minute. “You looked dead,” she said.
I glanced back at her, saw tears brimming at her lashes. And yet I still couldn’t reach back, the barrier still between us.
“I thought I’d killed you.” She sniffed, swiped absently at a tear. “Catcher had to hold me up. The vampires freaked; I think they wanted to take us out. Ethan checked your pulse, said you were alive, and he was all bloodied up. Blood everywhere. You were, too, cuts and scratches on your arms, on your cheeks. You two beat the shit out of each other. Catcher picked you up, and someone brought Ethan a shirt, and everyone got in the car. I brought your sword.” She pointed to the corner where it balanced on its pommel against the bedroom wall. It was back in the scabbard, cleaned, probably by Catcher, who’d have taken exquisite care of the blood-tempered blade.
“He carried you up here.”
“Catcher?”
Mallory shook her head, then rubbed at her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, seemed to shake off the emotion.
“Ethan. He rode with us. They—the vampires,
your
vampires—followed him in another car.”
My
vampires. I’d become something else to her. A different kind of thing.
“Catcher said you needed to sleep it off, that you’d heal from it all.”
I looked down at my arms, which were pale and pristine once again. I had healed, just like he’d predicted.
“So Ethan carried you up here, and Catcher took care of me, I guess, and Lindsey and Luc—we all waited downstairs.” She glanced up at me. “You were unconscious the whole time?”
I looked back at her, my best friend, and I didn’t tell her what I’d done.
That I’d gone through some part of the change again, and in the haze of it, the bloodlust of it, had taken blood from someone else.
His blood.
Ethan’s.
And it had been like a homecoming.
I couldn’t even begin to deal with that, to process it.
“I was out,” I told her.
Mallory looked at me, but nodded, maybe not buying it completely, but not arguing the point. She sighed and leaned forward, enveloped me in a hug. “There’s a reason they call it hopelessly romantic.”
“And not rationally romantic?”
“Well-developed-thoughtly romantic.”
I half chuckled and knuckled away my own tears. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t mock me.” She squeezed, then let me go.
“You fireballed me. Knocked me out.” Made me drink him, I thought, but didn’t voice that aloud, being ill-equipped for the Freudian analysis that would follow the confession. “I’m entitled to mock a little.”
“It’s not fire. It’s a way to transmit the magic. A kind of conduit.” Mallory sighed and stood up. I hadn’t noticed how tired
she looked. Dark circles shadowed eyes already swollen from tears.
“As much as I’d like to continue this conversation, which is honestly not at all, dawn’s nearly here. We both need sleep.” She stood, went for the door and, hand on the doorknob, stood there for a moment. “We’re going to change. This is going to change us both. There’s no guarantee that we come out the end of it still liking each other.”
My stomach clenched, but I nodded. “I know.”
“We do the best we can.”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, Merit,” she said, and flipped off the light, then shut the door behind her as she left.
I lay back, one hand under my head, one on my stomach, eyes on the ceiling. It hadn’t been a particularly good night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE KING AND I
The next night bloomed warm and clear. The house was quiet when I emerged downstairs, beeper and sword in hand. I nabbed a bottle of juice from Mallory’s refrigerator, avoiding the last bag of blood, the drinking I’d done last night either satiating me fully or putting me off the taste completely.
Not that it had been horrible.
Because it hadn’t been horrible.
And that was the thought that played over and over again in my head as I drove south again—just how unhorrible it had been.
My beeper sounded just as I pulled in front of the House. I unclipped it, found MTG @ U. NOW. BLRM scrolling on the display.
Charming. The entire House was being called to discuss my punishment, I presumed, given that the meeting was being held in the House’s ballroom, rather than somewhere, I don’t know, more intimate? Like Ethan’s office? With only me and him in attendance?
Grumbling, I parked and closed up the car, thinking I wasn’t exactly dressed for public humiliation in my leftover jeans and fitted black T-shirt. My Cadogan suit had been shredded; I wore the fanciest thing still in my closet at Mal’s house. I had to pause outside the gate, not quite ready for the onslaught.
“Quite a show.”
I looked up, found the RDI guards looking at me curiously. “Pardon me?”
“Last night,” the one on the left offered. “You wreaked a good bit of havoc.”
“Unintentionally,” I dryly said, shifting my gaze back to the House. Normally I’d have been thrilled to get conversation out of the usually silent guards, but not on this topic.
“Good luck,” said the one on the right.
I offered as appreciative a smile as I could muster, took a breath, and went for the door.
I could hear the sounds of the meeting as I climbed the stairs to the second-floor ballroom. The first floor had been quiet, but the echo of ambient vampire noise—conversations, coughing, shuffling—drifted down from the ballroom.
The doors were open when I reached it, a mass of Cadogan vampires inside. There were ninety-eight who resided in the House, and I guessed at least two-thirds of the group were here. Ethan, once again in his crisp black suit, stood alone on the short riser at the front of the room. Our gazes met and he held up a hand, silencing the vampires. Heads turned, eyes on me.
I swallowed, gripped the sword I still held in my hand, and walked inside. I couldn’t bear to look at them, to see if their gazes were accusatory, insulted, fearful, so I kept my eyes on Ethan, the crowd parting around me as I walked through the room.
I didn’t deny that, as Master, he needed to deal with me, to
dole out punishment for what I’d done, for challenging him—for the second time—in his own House. But was the ceremony necessary? Was my humiliation in front of most of the vampires in the House necessary?
The final vampires separated, and I found consoling eyes in Lindsey, who offered a compassionate smile before turning to face Ethan. I walked to the riser, stood before him, and gazed up.
He looked back at me for a moment, expression carefully blank, before lifting his gaze to the crowd. He smiled at them, and I moved to the side so as not to block the view.
“Didn’t we just do this?” he asked with a grin. The vampires laughed appreciatively. My cheeks blossomed with heat.
“I debated,” he told them, “whether to offer a lengthy dissertation on why last night’s events occurred. The biological and psychological precursors. The fact that Merit defended me against an attack by one of our own. And speaking of which, I regret to inform you that Peter is no longer a member of Cadogan House.”
Vampires gasped, whispers trickling through the crowd.
“But most importantly,” he said, “the attack by Celina Desaulniers that directly led to the incident here. I will preface my conclusions by advising you all to be aware of your surroundings. While it’s possible that Celina has chosen a single target, she may have a vendetta against Cadogan vampires, Chicago vampires, Housed vampires in general. If you’re away from the grounds, be careful. And if you hear anything with respect to her activities or her movement, contact me, Malik, or Luc immediately. I am not asking you to be spies. I am asking you to be careful, and not squander the immortality with which you’ve been gifted.”
A rumbling of dissonant “Liege”s echoed through the room.
“And now to the matter at hand,” he said, gaze falling on
me again. “I am not sure what good it would do to tell you that I trust Merit. That despite the fact that she has challenged me twice, she has saved my life and provided invaluable services to this House.”
I had to work to keep the shock from my face, that being quite an announcement to make to a roomful of vampires who’d seen what I’d done.
“You will make up your own minds. She is your sibling, and you must make up your own minds, reach your own conclusions, just as you would for any other member of this House. That said, it can be difficult to make up your minds when you hardly have an opportunity to see her.”
Okay, I liked that first part, but I wasn’t crazy about where this was going.
“It has been brought to my attention that it would be beneficial to host a House mixer of sorts, to allow you to meet each other socially, to get to know each other outside the bonds of work or duty.”
Lindsey, I thought. The traitor. I gritted my teeth and slid a glance behind me to where she stood, grinning. She gave me a finger wave. I made a mental note to punk her as soon as I had the opportunity.
“Therefore,” Ethan said, drawing my gaze again, “so that Merit can better appreciate the vampires she has sworn to protect, so that Merit can come to know you all as siblings, and you her, I have decided to name her Cadogan House . . . Social Chair.”
I closed my eyes. It was a ridiculously mild punishment, I knew. But it was also completely humiliating.
“Of course, Helen and Merit can work together to plan functions that will be enjoyable for all parties.”
Now that was just cruel. And he knew it, too, if the snarky cant of his words was any indication. I opened my eyes again,
found him smiling with keen self-satisfaction, and bit back the curse that formed on my lips.
“Liege,” I said, bobbing my head with Grateful Condescension.
Ethan lifted a dubious brow, crossed his arms as he scanned the crowd again. “I’m the first to admit it isn’t the most . . . satisfying punishment.”
Vampires chuckled.
“And I’m not able, at this point, to reveal details that I believe would sway your opinions, lead you to the same conclusions I’ve reached. But there are few I would trust with the duty of serving this House as Sentinel. And she is the only one I’ve appointed to that task. She’ll remain in that position, and she’ll remain here, in Cadogan House.”
He grinned again, and this time gave them that look of wicked, boyish charm that probably incited adoration among his female subjects. “And she’ll do what she can to ensure that, as they say, ‘There ain’t no party like a Cadogan party.’ ”
I couldn’t help the dubious snort that escaped me, but the crowd, enamored as they were of their Master, hooted their agreement. When the loudest of the cheers had quieted, he announced that they were excused, and after a polite, unified “Liege
,
” they filed from the room.
“The Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment,” I told him when he stepped down from the podium.
“What?” he innocently asked. “Getting you out of the library? I believe it’s due time, Sentinel.”
“Now that I’m a real, live vampire?”
“Something like that,” he absently said, frowning as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He flipped it open, and as he scanned whatever text was displayed there, his expression blanked.
“Let’s go,” was all he said. I obediently followed.
Lindsey, a straggler at the back of the vampire crowd, winked at me as I passed. “You said you wanted a mixer,” she whispered. “And I so told you he wanted you.”
“Oh, you’ll get what’s coming to you, Blondie,” I warned, index finger pointed in her direction, and followed Ethan out of the room.
He didn’t speak, but tunneled through the vampires on the stairs to the first floor and then to the front door. Curious, katana still in hand, I followed him out to the portico.
A limousine was parked in front of the gate.
“Who is it?” I asked, standing just behind him.